Modern mobile phones can perform a wide variety of functions, such as taking and sending photographs and video, playing music and games, and surfing the internet and accessing social networks. As prices of both phones and calls have come down in the past decades, they have become much more affordable for young people and kids are getting mobile phones at younger ages.
A 2010 Pew Internet and American Life Project study revealed that 75 percent of kids ages 12 to 17 own a cell phone. The majority of kids—66 percent—got their first phones before their 14th birthday. However, overuse of smartphones can be detrimental to kids. There are studies showing that smartphone games and applications designed for kids can actually discourage them from interacting with other kids and people around them. Traditional playtime may eventually be a thing of the past with the presence of all these highly technological games. In addition, excessive exposure to the use of smartphones at an early age can trigger poor eye sight for kids because their eyes would constantly have to adjust to the phone screen which can also be a cause for headaches and even migraines at a very young age. Similarly to the overuse of internet, smartphone's online and video games are terribly addicting so it is highly likely that kids will spend hours playing on smartphones if they get hooked on a particular game. Thus, they might spend more time on smartphone games than necessary and neglect their school works.
With the popularization of social media networks such as Facebook® and Twitter®, there are kids finding cyberbullying or sending sexually provocative pictures, messages or video clips via a smartphone fun and easy because they generally have not fully developed the sense of morality and empathy. Cyberbullying, in particular, has been an epidemic that is occurring in almost every country where mobile device is prevalent. In extreme cases, victims of cyberbullying have taken their own lives.
Parents may be able to prevent some of these problems by physically take away their kids' mobile phone at times they don't want their kids to use it (i.e., ground their kids from using their mobile devices for a specific time). They can also read their kids' text message or email through their kids' mobile phone to see if they are sending improper messages to or receiving improper messages from others. However, such measures are not always effective because kids may have deleted messages they don't want their parents to see. In addition, parents may not want to take away their kids' mobile phone all the time because they want their kids to be reachable in case of emergency, which is one of the top reasons most parents give their kids mobile phone in the first place.
Accordingly, there exists a need to provide a system and method where parents can effectively monitor and restrict their kids' use of mobile phone. There also exists a need for parents to ground their kids' use of mobile phone without the need of physically taking the mobile phone away. Lastly, there also exists a need for parents to control text messages received by their kids.